Falloux Laws

The Falloux Laws were voted in during the French Second Republic and promulgated on 15 March 1850 and in 1851, following the presidential election of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in December 1848 and the May 1849 legislative elections that gave a majority to the conservative Parti de l'Ordre. Named for the Minister of Education Alfred de Falloux, they mainly aimed at promoting Catholic teaching. The Falloux Law of 15 March 1850 also extended the requirements of the Guizot Law of 1833, which had mandated a boys' school in each commune of more than 500 inhabitants, to require a girls' school in those communes. The 1851 law created a mixed system, in which some primary education establishments were public and controlled by the state and others were under the supervision of Catholic congregations.

The new law opened an era of cooperation between Church and state that lasted until the Ferry laws ended this in the early 1880s. The Falloux laws provided universal primary schooling in France and expanded opportunities for secondary schooling. In practice, the curricula in Catholic and state schools were similar. Catholic schools were especially useful in schooling for girls, which had long been neglected.

The main objectives of the Falloux Laws was to replace the revolutionary and imperial system, which had placed the whole of the education system under the supervision of the University and of state-trained teachers, who were accused of spreading Republicans and anti-clerical ideas, by a system giving responsibility for education back to the clergy. This aim was largely achieved: the Falloux Law created a mixed system, public (and mostly secular) on one hand, and private and Catholic on the other.

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